> However, stopping working with Microsoft and other US tech companies is not an option in the short term, he told the magazine.
> Van der Burg is currently grappling with the issue of Solvinity, a Dutch cloud service provider which is widely used by government departments including the Digid identity system, and which is on the verge of being sold to a US company.
> The Dutch tax office is also currently switching to Microsoft systems, despite MPs’ concerns.
They all talk about the importance of European digital sovereignty and then continue to do the exact opposite behind the scenes.
They all talk about the importance of European digital sovereignty and then continue to do the exact opposite behind the scenes.
To be honest and I say this as a Dutch person, this is typical Dutch (government). Basically two rules in Dutch politics: (1) always choose the option that pleases the US the most; (2) always postpone solving issues to the latest possible moment (US dependence, nitrogen deposition, childcare benefits scandal, gas-induced earthquakes).
France, Germany, etc. are much better examples when it comes to sovereignty.
As an aside the parliament wants to stop the Solvinity acquisition or stop renewing the contract with Solvinity. But the VVD (one of the parties in government) is always going to choose what is best for big business (the party is one big revolving door) or the US.
It's not only Dutch. Instead of building sovereignity, the EU thought they could regulate their way and force everyone to bend the knee because of their share as a trading partner. This started 20 years ago. However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling, but the politicians have hard to grasp with the reality they could somehow dictate things globally. AI will only further accelerate this.
Only way to have control is to have domestic actors you can push around.
Europeans (and not just the EU) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Europeans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
Americans (and not just the US) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Americans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
It is a general western problem to some extent, but the US has a a faster growing economy than any of the big European economies. It is still a super-power.
The "faster growing economy" is basically 100% AI speculation now. If that gamble pays of the US is still in trouble (as is the rest of the world), as there doesn't appear to be even a hint of a plan of what a post-AI society looks like for anybody but the top 0.1%.
I don't think the top 0.1% has a plan, either. From my personal interactions with them, they are mostly just excited they can talk to a chatbot on their phone all day, and then make questionable decisions from that - to use a recent example, deciding to be their own general contractor and make a house remodel cost an extra million and take an extra year to do.
Well, Musk for one is promising not universal basic income, but universal high income. In a country where a lot of people don't even have health insurance. Let's see how that will work out, I'll believe it when I see it...
The other year the US was beaten by a starved little country on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, and recently by a somewhat large country by the Persian Gulf. Currently their only real ally is getting beaten by FPV drones handled by a guerilla force.
The US has very little influence today compared to a decade or more ago. To the extent that the world at large cares about the US it's because they are committing genocide and destroying global trade logistics. All of their former allies are trying to substitute them out, or at least hedge with other international relations.
As far as I can tell, outside certain parts of the Occident, no one cares about new US movies or television series anymore. The Oscars gather some interest because some people want to know if any entertainment industry people will go against the regime and say something negative about mass murder of children, but that's about it. Future generations will be shaped more by chinese and indian movies than usian ones.
When apartheid South Africa was about to crumble it also initiated nasty military campaigns and faked political and military supremacy for a while, as did Idi Amin's Uganda. I'd bet something similar is going on in the US.
Some people are still stuck in the late Cold War, notably EU politicians like von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, as well as most swedish top politicians. They cannot imagine a world where the US is not calling the shots and will drag Europe further into global irrelevancy by idiotically paying tribute and kneeling for the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is disgusted and horrified by the bumbling nastiness of contemporary US empire.
They also came to realize building, operating and maintaining a military force is extremely expensive. Free healthcare, 7 weeks of vacation, 36 hr work weeks, unemployment benefits, subsidized housing, etc etc is all great when you don’t have the financial burden of protecting your home.
USA has said they will not support Europe in a military conflict so now you can slash your military and fire all those soldiers and have free health care etc. No? Sounds like ”protecting” Europe wasn’t what stood in the way of free healthcare, vacation, etc.
Nearly half (about 47%) of healthcare in the U.S. is government-paid, although via a variety of different programs. The USA also has quite lavish benefits in a variety of other ways.
Of course, that is mostly paid for via massive amounts of debt, not from savings of military spending. But government spending on healthcare is more than twice (2.5 to 3 times) that of military spending. So slashing military spending to zero would just mean the amount of government-provided healthcare spending could go from 47% to 56% or so. (Not taking into account that a lot of "military spending" is actually healthcare spending!)
Total EU defense spending is around $450M USD. The US defense budget, prior to 2027, is about $950M USD. Are you saying the US could have all those social policies for $500M USD?
> However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling
Uh, no. The US soft power is turning to dust whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin.
What has happened the past ±30 years is that most EU countries cut spending on their militaries to the bone, because big brother USA would take care of it anyway. Now that we are returning to a multi-polar world, suddenly the EU is left scrambling for hard power that it doesn't have. That's why they can't play hardball when the US does a new ridiculous thing, because they simply lack the hard power to back up Ukraine.
The US is sorely going to regret their antics though. Long term, the EU is going to switch to their own stacks, both for military but also things like cloud and other tech. It's trillions of $ the US economy will be missing out on. And voting in a Democratic president, senate and house is not gonna change a thing about it, because the US has proven itself to be a fundamentally unreliable, if not outright hostile partner.
The US alone spends 1.5x as much on consumer goods (yes, adjusted for PPP) and nearly 2x as much on R&D as the entire EU. It’s very sweet that the EU is trying to decouple itself from the US economy, but I highly doubt its ability to become “leader of the free trade world” when it has so little money to throw around.
"the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin"
At its usual pace ... do you know when the negotiations with Mercosur started? Year 2000. Only now we have an agreement. Still, better than not doing anything at all. But I wonder how many of the original negotiators are still alive.
It also yet remains to be seen what happens if China puts a real pressure on us. Our list of allies is now somewhat thin and we have to cozy up to India, which indirectly funds the Russian war against Ukraine by importing Russian weapons and Russian oil/gas, the latter in huge quantities. Still, better than cozying up to China, because the possibility that Beijing teaches Brussels some cool tricks to keep the population under perfect surveillance scares me.
>whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin.
Being an international pushover with no teeth that folds like a deck chair to the demands of the rest of the world at negotiations, isn't "building the new free [trade] world,", or at least not one that benefits the EU. Absolute free trade isn't always a benefit for your own citizens and industries. Do you want to import low quality agriculture made by slave labor that will undercut your own farmers and put them out of business? Do you want to import unlimited people without assurance the government has enough housing, childcare and medical staff already in place for said new people? There's a reason borders and goods have some restrictions, because sudden heavy imbalances lead to destabilization of society and democracy.
The recent free trade agreements the EU has been desperately signing lately (mercosur, etc) are just short term gain for long term pain down the road, since everyone has the EU by the balls right now so other countries are squeezing as much as they can from the EU now while they're busy with Russia, expensive energy and losing China as an export market for their expensive cars.
EU capitulating to foreign trade pressures, is not gonna create a superpower like dreamers think, it's gonna create new dependencies with other (less democratic) countries, which is gonna backfire just like their dependency to US tech and Russian and China market did, in the future when those countries will have a strong grip over EU critical sectors, they will then demand concessions from the EU, and the EU will again fold like a deckchair because the EU is never in a position to bully others or retaliate to preserve its own interest let alone impose them around the world, further losing power internationally and remaining a pushover where its citizens lose, while the core issues plaguing the EU(demographics, debt, government speeding on welfare, lack of innovation and manufacturing in key sectors, no VC funding) will remain and continue to grow.
Signing deals to import more people and cheap food and stuff from Latam, India or wherever to depress wages and prices, doesn't fix any of that not make the EU a superpower, it just kicks the can down the road.
It is amusing what he inflicts on USA and I thoroughly enoy it ... But the idea that EU is taking leadership in this chaos is somewhere between laughable and delusional.
Actually EU is getting fucked on every possible turn. We are the ones that pay trough the nose for all his follies. We are weaker than ever and we have delusional commission in charge.
It is difficult to think of an economic region that is more opposed to free trade than Europe (that isn't a comedy country). Possibly some countries in South America?
Trade within Europe has massive restrictions. I have no idea why, given the stated aims of Europe...we are posting this on a post about the Netherlands trying to protect office software ffs, people think this isn't the case. One of the reasons why the EU created a trade bloc, and the same reasons why you see the same attempts in areas of the world like South America, was to limit the impact of free trade. This should be completely obvious given that the EU is not competitive in areas where they lack the ability to limit competition.
Also, I will point out: US policy is for the EU to do exactly the thing that you are suggesting. This has been the consistent position of Trump since 2016. The main blockers for this have been politicians in the EU. I am not sure how you equate being unreliable with subsidising EU defence spending to the tune of multiple trillions so that EU countries can spend on welfare either.
The EU self-image is totally bizarre, it is so out of touch with reality. Hostile to all forms of change and innovation: actually one of the greatest free traders there has ever been. Xenophobic and hostile to certain countries: possibly one of the greatest allies to these countries ever. Never gets any support on Ukraine, would be a leader if the US weren't such bastards: spent multiple decades fuelling Putin's state.
The only people that think global free trade is a good thing are the top .001% net worth individuals which use it to wield power.
Trading blocks (like the European single market) are specifically designed to protect their members from shit that global corporations or other nations attempt to get away with.
I'm not sure what "Trade within Europe has massive restrictions." means without context. Compared to some Randian capitalist utopia where there are no rules and no governments? Or compared to before the creation of the European single market?
“The International Monetary Fund estimates that the persistent barriers to the EU single market still represented the equivalent of a 110 % tariff on services.”
There is a good amount of work to be done to complete the single market, what we currently have is way too fragmented
That is politically impossible. Everyone knows it is impossible because if you open up some countries to free services trade then the political basis for the EU and the traditional governing countries would collapse.
The limitations on trade within Europe are intentional design. The attempts to stop the economy from collapsing with these massive government spending packages are the death throes.
I mean, it is extremely difficult, but the whole union was seen as impossible the last century. With strategic developments over decades I don’t think it’s impossible
What you said comprises the exact error in logic that people make. Because we did this, this other thing is possible.
The EU was a certainty in a region that is hostile to change, wants big government, wants centralization, is suspicious of democracy, etc. Free trade would be a massive change, that is why it hasn't happened. The EU is basically the logical conclusion of European forms of governing.
Services trade within Europe is often less free than services trade outside of Europe. The reason why is because there is a strong political constituency within Europe to ensure that certain kinds of sinecure jobs are not impacted by competition (and yes, as you helpfully point out, to blame that on "global corporations"...and people wonder why Europe had such a long period of dictatorships in the 20th century, "globalism", right? wink, wink).
There are still some protectionist issues on the single market itself.
For example, Poland defends its rail operator, PKP Intercity, against foreign competition by a series of dirty tricks, including "just never registering a sale of a depot to a competing corporation in the land registry".
Almost every major EU country, has implanted some domestic protectionist rules to protect some of its politically well connected lobbyist industries or jobs from cheaper or more efficient intra-EU competition buying them out. The restrictions almost never are in reverse.
I don’t understand how you can believe that about the EU. The union has been evolving so much since its creation. It is itself one of the greatest innovation in governance ever created. GDPR is an innovative framework making the EU leader in privacy protection. European open banking initiatives/frameworks are unique and have been leading the way forward for the past 20 years, and we are now reaping all the benefits with the latest payment system developments (PSD2 and others were already awesome but the payment standard is what makes the day to day citizens actually see the results). The 28th regime[0] in development is innovative. Schengen/TFEU Art. 45 is such an innovative policy. Where else can you move freely between so many countries?
That’s only from the top of my head and the few examples I’m familiar with
Not to mention being overrun by Dodge Rams that do not meet EU safety roles but come in under a loophole. I like living here mostly but a lot of what makes it nice is threatened by the US.
> always postpone solving issues to the latest possible moment
Germany has the exact same issue. Always looking to keep the status quo for as long as possible. It’s really a structural problem, it’s the result of the political system, elected leadership, demographics (mostly the voting population aging rapidly). I expect the same issue is shared by most Western European countries
Isn't this simply a "human thing", keeping the status quo for as long as possible? I see the same European country I'm from, where I'm living currently, the South American country my wife is from and every single country I visit.
Maybe another framing, is there any countries where this isn't true? Where truly the default is to go against the status quo and continuously improve no matter what? I know there are a few countries people think are like that, but when you start reading about it, turns out to be kind of "hyped" and not matching reality.
People talk like "status quo" was inherently a bad thing, and that any change to it is good by default. On the contrary, "status quo" is usually a hard-won place, a foothold against strong tides, a position that you try to preserve while carefully considering your next step, because a careless step will just send you falling back down to whatever hellhole reality your predecessors dragged themselves up from.
Status quo is not a stable state, it's a state you defend.
The problem is defending a status quo adapted to a past reality that doesn’t make sense anymore. You need change to adapt to an evolving world, with new challenges, new alliances, new industries, etc
Some countries with different politics like China do not seem to suffer the same issues, or at least not yet. Or maybe the country is defending a different status quo (the mono-party)? But they seem to be eager to develop the infrastructure and country as a whole.
Not that I would want to live under their political system, to be clear. I wish we could have a democratic system AND also be eager to develop our regions instead of being so protective of everything
I don’t think it’s different politics directly in China. The people believe that change means change for the better. In the west people have lost all hope for progress.
Another way to look at it is that things just move slowly in government land. The tax office moving towards Microsoft has probably been in preparation for half a decade... And do you really believe the government is technically capable of switching DigiD to a different provider on a (relative) moments notice without causing large scale outages?
We'll start seeing government bodies moving away from US IT suppliers in a couple of years.
The actual question is if (capable) SWEs will choose working for (or be a founder of) Dutch/Euro tech companies over US ones, or even leave the US to live there.
Europe is an excellent value prop if you want to be a bartender or baker. Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker.
Which might be impossible given that sacrifices will have to be made in the interim, and people already riot if you even hint at moving retirement age up a year.
It takes time. Hence whey Microsoft has a stranglehold on big gov. customers in other countries.
From my own experience, big changes can take place in smaller gov. organizations, and pretty fast too. I've worked at a place where we swapped out all Microsoft and commercial products to open source alternatives in just a couple of weeks. But it was a smaller and specialized part of an organization, with 30 users.
Trying to do the same change, where there are millions of users involved? It will almost certainly take a decade or more.
The only thing that would accelerate such a process, would be Microsoft shutting down services at the command of, say, the US president. But that would only be the case if said country ended up being sanctioned by the US.
Rather like pre 2022 Russia, governments get warnings that something bad is going to happen that it would be expensive to prepare for, and put off preparing because you don't get political rewards for that.
The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him).
The issue with the EU is that they lack the capacity for any kind of strategic thought. There are multiple reasons why but the underlying cause is that it is possible to move into local minimum where there is a very strong disincentive for any kind of change. Countries in the EU have generally been in that place since before the EU...that is why the EU was created, to limit change. It is isn't political incentives, it is a fundamental aspect of the political culture. If you also look at the stuff that has changed, this only becomes more strange (i.e. government intervention, immigration, regulations). Change is limited to preserve control.
> The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him).
To add to your point, despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government. Local minima, everything is fine, there is no fire, I'm going to make some tea while the tables turns to ash under the pot.
As the other answer says, surely this would always be the case. People do not deal with government regularly and there is a strong disincentive to report upon this.
I think you see the same thing in every Western democracy where people believe there is no corruption or believe in rather comical forms of corruption, but the corruption is actually systemic and a function of some political configuration that can't really stand change. This is certainly the case in Germany where you have this odd alliance between unions and billionaires that has basically led to, despite the amazing talent of their people, amazingly poor policy delivery.
>despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government
Because Germans only believe what their state speech controlled media is telling them. The prussian school is based on getting people to respect authority not about free critical thinking. Makes the population easily susceptible to government propaganda which has been used against them for 100 years already and they still haven't learned.
They also don't believe any foreigners pointing out their internal issue: "no, YOU are wrong, we make ze best cars in ze world(not anymore lol), so our country can't be doing anything wrong".
This is by the way how the defense was treated for decades as well. US resisted the EU from building a formidable army, instead they preferred a vassal state defense, enough to deter others from messing with Europe, not enough for Europe to be independent, and buying almost exclusively from US defense companies propping up US military R&D and financing factories during peacetime.
Now that the US has pivoted to Asia since Obama, they expect the EU to fill the gap they leave behind. But that’s new, the US wanted it exactly like it was pre 2014 or so.
If you think about it in terms of game theory that is actually a fair approach - you have an ally, you propose a best-case path forward for the alliance where both members are strong. If the ally don't want to take that path then you exploit the ally instead since a technically incompetent ally is a liability who needs to be kept under tight control.
Because there is no punishment for lying in politics.
Look at the Trump, connected to p*dos, instead of stopping wars, started a war, betrayed MAGA, but still no action taken against him, because there is no legal action for lying to become a politican
There are many different tracks underway in government in different branches. Completely vetoing everything to use Microsoft is a difficult decision as it also stops a lot of features that depend on it, or were made to depend on it, such as updating tax codes. Therefore it is a risk/benefit assessment rather than outright lying. (The latter also happens obviously but just wanted to state that reality is more gray than black and white.)
It is a central theme covered in too many sources to list, but it is always a deal with the figurative devil, treason, betrayal of not just oneself, but everyone else who trusted you, lifted you, and relied on you.
It is why treason is such a pernicious and evil act even when one is ignorant of perpetrating it, because you may personally advance your own position for a moment by making a deal with the devil, but the real price is always immeasurably greater.
It is also why no one hates the traitor more than the devil himself, because he knows best what a vile and untrustworthy traitor the person is that would betray his own people. Even the devil cannot even respect that, hence why the only thing one can be sure of when making a deal with the devil is that the devil and his children will always stab you in the back.
It is the existential question all of “the west” is wrestling with right now. Whether they can stop the traitors among them who have long ago made many deals with many devils and his many children…or will they personally “profit” in the short term all the way to figurative hell.
I don't know what the US thinks it will gain by targeting civil servants. They are not the ones with the power to decide what happens, and retaliation would mean more anti-US people selecting themselves into these projects.
> retaliation would mean more anti-US people selecting themselves into these projects.
Very few people are martyrs or want to become martyrs. Even fewer in places where life is generally fine and for a cause that isn't dire to their loved ones.
>They are not the ones with the power to decide what happens
This is a very naive interpretation. Bureaucrats have MASSIVE amount of power and control, and in actuality decide many things and how the law is written.
These civil servants are effectively trying to bypass the US court. These civil servants yield considerable power what comes to the censorship, and the Whitehouse really really hates the idea that the EU can decide, not them, what is allowed. This will send a message that the US stands behind its companies and is not push around. If you want to push non-domestic enforcement, you need to be willing to stand behind the principles and be publicly ready to defend the censorship rulings you set forward.
I would read the links in the article. The problem is that social media companies worked with civil servants in European countries to remove posts being made people outside Europe. This also happened in the UK where there were parts of the government that were able to make requests directly to social media companies to remove posts on their platform, regardless of where the poster was from.
For obvious reasons, the linked article does not explain that fully.
It is kind of weird to see the turnaround on here from people who complain about the US government being too powerful but, for some reason, are quite okay with an unelected EU bureaucrat being able to govern their internet usage. There are no principles at play here.
Honestly, rather a "unelected EU bureaucrat" (What does this even mean? Are we going to individually elect the entire civil service, or require elected officials to delegate nothing and personally review every decision?) than an American tech-bro governing my internet usage.
USA has always seemed it's companies. Will they do the same they did with International Criminal Court? They were investigating Israel genocide and now they judges can't use a credit card or travel.
Dutchnews.nl is an established media outlet and what a lot of English/non-Dutch speakers use to keep up with Dutch news (which is perhaps surprisingly to Americans, usually written in Dutch)
Good. downvote away, but unelected bureaucrats who make decisions that affect millions of people should not be shielded from public scrutiny. If regulators are exercising significant power over speech, competition, privacy, or access to information, it is legitimate to know who is making those decisions and to examine their actions .. this action from US cos forces skin in the game on these policy researchers ..
> However, stopping working with Microsoft and other US tech companies is not an option in the short term, he told the magazine.
> Van der Burg is currently grappling with the issue of Solvinity, a Dutch cloud service provider which is widely used by government departments including the Digid identity system, and which is on the verge of being sold to a US company.
> The Dutch tax office is also currently switching to Microsoft systems, despite MPs’ concerns.
They all talk about the importance of European digital sovereignty and then continue to do the exact opposite behind the scenes.
They all talk about the importance of European digital sovereignty and then continue to do the exact opposite behind the scenes.
To be honest and I say this as a Dutch person, this is typical Dutch (government). Basically two rules in Dutch politics: (1) always choose the option that pleases the US the most; (2) always postpone solving issues to the latest possible moment (US dependence, nitrogen deposition, childcare benefits scandal, gas-induced earthquakes).
France, Germany, etc. are much better examples when it comes to sovereignty.
As an aside the parliament wants to stop the Solvinity acquisition or stop renewing the contract with Solvinity. But the VVD (one of the parties in government) is always going to choose what is best for big business (the party is one big revolving door) or the US.
It's not only Dutch. Instead of building sovereignity, the EU thought they could regulate their way and force everyone to bend the knee because of their share as a trading partner. This started 20 years ago. However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling, but the politicians have hard to grasp with the reality they could somehow dictate things globally. AI will only further accelerate this.
Only way to have control is to have domestic actors you can push around.
Europeans (and not just the EU) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Europeans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
Americans (and not just the US) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Americans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
It is a general western problem to some extent, but the US has a a faster growing economy than any of the big European economies. It is still a super-power.
The "faster growing economy" is basically 100% AI speculation now. If that gamble pays of the US is still in trouble (as is the rest of the world), as there doesn't appear to be even a hint of a plan of what a post-AI society looks like for anybody but the top 0.1%.
I don't think the top 0.1% has a plan, either. From my personal interactions with them, they are mostly just excited they can talk to a chatbot on their phone all day, and then make questionable decisions from that - to use a recent example, deciding to be their own general contractor and make a house remodel cost an extra million and take an extra year to do.
Well, Musk for one is promising not universal basic income, but universal high income. In a country where a lot of people don't even have health insurance. Let's see how that will work out, I'll believe it when I see it...
The other year the US was beaten by a starved little country on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, and recently by a somewhat large country by the Persian Gulf. Currently their only real ally is getting beaten by FPV drones handled by a guerilla force.
The US has very little influence today compared to a decade or more ago. To the extent that the world at large cares about the US it's because they are committing genocide and destroying global trade logistics. All of their former allies are trying to substitute them out, or at least hedge with other international relations.
As far as I can tell, outside certain parts of the Occident, no one cares about new US movies or television series anymore. The Oscars gather some interest because some people want to know if any entertainment industry people will go against the regime and say something negative about mass murder of children, but that's about it. Future generations will be shaped more by chinese and indian movies than usian ones.
When apartheid South Africa was about to crumble it also initiated nasty military campaigns and faked political and military supremacy for a while, as did Idi Amin's Uganda. I'd bet something similar is going on in the US.
Some people are still stuck in the late Cold War, notably EU politicians like von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, as well as most swedish top politicians. They cannot imagine a world where the US is not calling the shots and will drag Europe further into global irrelevancy by idiotically paying tribute and kneeling for the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is disgusted and horrified by the bumbling nastiness of contemporary US empire.
They also came to realize building, operating and maintaining a military force is extremely expensive. Free healthcare, 7 weeks of vacation, 36 hr work weeks, unemployment benefits, subsidized housing, etc etc is all great when you don’t have the financial burden of protecting your home.
USA has said they will not support Europe in a military conflict so now you can slash your military and fire all those soldiers and have free health care etc. No? Sounds like ”protecting” Europe wasn’t what stood in the way of free healthcare, vacation, etc.
Nearly half (about 47%) of healthcare in the U.S. is government-paid, although via a variety of different programs. The USA also has quite lavish benefits in a variety of other ways.
Of course, that is mostly paid for via massive amounts of debt, not from savings of military spending. But government spending on healthcare is more than twice (2.5 to 3 times) that of military spending. So slashing military spending to zero would just mean the amount of government-provided healthcare spending could go from 47% to 56% or so. (Not taking into account that a lot of "military spending" is actually healthcare spending!)
Total EU defense spending is around $450M USD. The US defense budget, prior to 2027, is about $950M USD. Are you saying the US could have all those social policies for $500M USD?
The US could have those benefits for free.
Single payer would be drastically cheaper than the current system.
The other benefits are just policies that slightly reduce GDP per capita based on a first order analysis.
We are able to afford so many other subsidies, so unclear why housing would be different.
The US could simply give away $1 M per resident, removing the need for social policies and it would still come out cheaper.
You aren’t counting the VA in your spending. That’s another 450 billion.
> However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling
Uh, no. The US soft power is turning to dust whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin.
What has happened the past ±30 years is that most EU countries cut spending on their militaries to the bone, because big brother USA would take care of it anyway. Now that we are returning to a multi-polar world, suddenly the EU is left scrambling for hard power that it doesn't have. That's why they can't play hardball when the US does a new ridiculous thing, because they simply lack the hard power to back up Ukraine.
The US is sorely going to regret their antics though. Long term, the EU is going to switch to their own stacks, both for military but also things like cloud and other tech. It's trillions of $ the US economy will be missing out on. And voting in a Democratic president, senate and house is not gonna change a thing about it, because the US has proven itself to be a fundamentally unreliable, if not outright hostile partner.
The US alone spends 1.5x as much on consumer goods (yes, adjusted for PPP) and nearly 2x as much on R&D as the entire EU. It’s very sweet that the EU is trying to decouple itself from the US economy, but I highly doubt its ability to become “leader of the free trade world” when it has so little money to throw around.
"the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin"
At its usual pace ... do you know when the negotiations with Mercosur started? Year 2000. Only now we have an agreement. Still, better than not doing anything at all. But I wonder how many of the original negotiators are still alive.
It also yet remains to be seen what happens if China puts a real pressure on us. Our list of allies is now somewhat thin and we have to cozy up to India, which indirectly funds the Russian war against Ukraine by importing Russian weapons and Russian oil/gas, the latter in huge quantities. Still, better than cozying up to China, because the possibility that Beijing teaches Brussels some cool tricks to keep the population under perfect surveillance scares me.
>Still, better than not doing anything at all
How is Mercosur better for the EU citizens?
German car companies get new countries in which to see themselves destroyed by China?
>whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin.
Being an international pushover with no teeth that folds like a deck chair to the demands of the rest of the world at negotiations, isn't "building the new free [trade] world,", or at least not one that benefits the EU. Absolute free trade isn't always a benefit for your own citizens and industries. Do you want to import low quality agriculture made by slave labor that will undercut your own farmers and put them out of business? Do you want to import unlimited people without assurance the government has enough housing, childcare and medical staff already in place for said new people? There's a reason borders and goods have some restrictions, because sudden heavy imbalances lead to destabilization of society and democracy.
The recent free trade agreements the EU has been desperately signing lately (mercosur, etc) are just short term gain for long term pain down the road, since everyone has the EU by the balls right now so other countries are squeezing as much as they can from the EU now while they're busy with Russia, expensive energy and losing China as an export market for their expensive cars.
EU capitulating to foreign trade pressures, is not gonna create a superpower like dreamers think, it's gonna create new dependencies with other (less democratic) countries, which is gonna backfire just like their dependency to US tech and Russian and China market did, in the future when those countries will have a strong grip over EU critical sectors, they will then demand concessions from the EU, and the EU will again fold like a deckchair because the EU is never in a position to bully others or retaliate to preserve its own interest let alone impose them around the world, further losing power internationally and remaining a pushover where its citizens lose, while the core issues plaguing the EU(demographics, debt, government speeding on welfare, lack of innovation and manufacturing in key sectors, no VC funding) will remain and continue to grow.
Signing deals to import more people and cheap food and stuff from Latam, India or wherever to depress wages and prices, doesn't fix any of that not make the EU a superpower, it just kicks the can down the road.
>Uh, no. The US soft power is turning to dust whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin.
To quote when harry met sally - I'll have what she's having.
He's having a dish called "Watching Trump from a distance", you should definitely try it.
It is amusing what he inflicts on USA and I thoroughly enoy it ... But the idea that EU is taking leadership in this chaos is somewhere between laughable and delusional.
Actually EU is getting fucked on every possible turn. We are the ones that pay trough the nose for all his follies. We are weaker than ever and we have delusional commission in charge.
It is difficult to think of an economic region that is more opposed to free trade than Europe (that isn't a comedy country). Possibly some countries in South America?
Trade within Europe has massive restrictions. I have no idea why, given the stated aims of Europe...we are posting this on a post about the Netherlands trying to protect office software ffs, people think this isn't the case. One of the reasons why the EU created a trade bloc, and the same reasons why you see the same attempts in areas of the world like South America, was to limit the impact of free trade. This should be completely obvious given that the EU is not competitive in areas where they lack the ability to limit competition.
Also, I will point out: US policy is for the EU to do exactly the thing that you are suggesting. This has been the consistent position of Trump since 2016. The main blockers for this have been politicians in the EU. I am not sure how you equate being unreliable with subsidising EU defence spending to the tune of multiple trillions so that EU countries can spend on welfare either.
The EU self-image is totally bizarre, it is so out of touch with reality. Hostile to all forms of change and innovation: actually one of the greatest free traders there has ever been. Xenophobic and hostile to certain countries: possibly one of the greatest allies to these countries ever. Never gets any support on Ukraine, would be a leader if the US weren't such bastards: spent multiple decades fuelling Putin's state.
The only people that think global free trade is a good thing are the top .001% net worth individuals which use it to wield power.
Trading blocks (like the European single market) are specifically designed to protect their members from shit that global corporations or other nations attempt to get away with.
I'm not sure what "Trade within Europe has massive restrictions." means without context. Compared to some Randian capitalist utopia where there are no rules and no governments? Or compared to before the creation of the European single market?
> I'm not sure what "Trade within Europe has massive restrictions." means without context.
We actually do have a good amount of issues regarding internal trades, according to https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2025/7792....
“The International Monetary Fund estimates that the persistent barriers to the EU single market still represented the equivalent of a 110 % tariff on services.”
There is a good amount of work to be done to complete the single market, what we currently have is way too fragmented
That is politically impossible. Everyone knows it is impossible because if you open up some countries to free services trade then the political basis for the EU and the traditional governing countries would collapse.
The limitations on trade within Europe are intentional design. The attempts to stop the economy from collapsing with these massive government spending packages are the death throes.
I mean, it is extremely difficult, but the whole union was seen as impossible the last century. With strategic developments over decades I don’t think it’s impossible
What you said comprises the exact error in logic that people make. Because we did this, this other thing is possible.
The EU was a certainty in a region that is hostile to change, wants big government, wants centralization, is suspicious of democracy, etc. Free trade would be a massive change, that is why it hasn't happened. The EU is basically the logical conclusion of European forms of governing.
> The EU was a certainty in a region that is hostile to change, wants big government, wants centralization, is suspicious of democracy, etc
I don’t understand how you can say that with a straight face, it’s such a contradictory statement
Services trade within Europe is often less free than services trade outside of Europe. The reason why is because there is a strong political constituency within Europe to ensure that certain kinds of sinecure jobs are not impacted by competition (and yes, as you helpfully point out, to blame that on "global corporations"...and people wonder why Europe had such a long period of dictatorships in the 20th century, "globalism", right? wink, wink).
They're letting Chinese cars in when automobiles are there last remaining mega industry.
How can you take them seriously?
There are still some protectionist issues on the single market itself.
For example, Poland defends its rail operator, PKP Intercity, against foreign competition by a series of dirty tricks, including "just never registering a sale of a depot to a competing corporation in the land registry".
Almost every major EU country, has implanted some domestic protectionist rules to protect some of its politically well connected lobbyist industries or jobs from cheaper or more efficient intra-EU competition buying them out. The restrictions almost never are in reverse.
> Hostile to all forms of change and innovation
I don’t understand how you can believe that about the EU. The union has been evolving so much since its creation. It is itself one of the greatest innovation in governance ever created. GDPR is an innovative framework making the EU leader in privacy protection. European open banking initiatives/frameworks are unique and have been leading the way forward for the past 20 years, and we are now reaping all the benefits with the latest payment system developments (PSD2 and others were already awesome but the payment standard is what makes the day to day citizens actually see the results). The 28th regime[0] in development is innovative. Schengen/TFEU Art. 45 is such an innovative policy. Where else can you move freely between so many countries?
That’s only from the top of my head and the few examples I’m familiar with
0: https://the28thregime.eu/
Not to mention being overrun by Dodge Rams that do not meet EU safety roles but come in under a loophole. I like living here mostly but a lot of what makes it nice is threatened by the US.
> always postpone solving issues to the latest possible moment
Germany has the exact same issue. Always looking to keep the status quo for as long as possible. It’s really a structural problem, it’s the result of the political system, elected leadership, demographics (mostly the voting population aging rapidly). I expect the same issue is shared by most Western European countries
Isn't this simply a "human thing", keeping the status quo for as long as possible? I see the same European country I'm from, where I'm living currently, the South American country my wife is from and every single country I visit.
Maybe another framing, is there any countries where this isn't true? Where truly the default is to go against the status quo and continuously improve no matter what? I know there are a few countries people think are like that, but when you start reading about it, turns out to be kind of "hyped" and not matching reality.
People talk like "status quo" was inherently a bad thing, and that any change to it is good by default. On the contrary, "status quo" is usually a hard-won place, a foothold against strong tides, a position that you try to preserve while carefully considering your next step, because a careless step will just send you falling back down to whatever hellhole reality your predecessors dragged themselves up from.
Status quo is not a stable state, it's a state you defend.
The problem is defending a status quo adapted to a past reality that doesn’t make sense anymore. You need change to adapt to an evolving world, with new challenges, new alliances, new industries, etc
Some countries with different politics like China do not seem to suffer the same issues, or at least not yet. Or maybe the country is defending a different status quo (the mono-party)? But they seem to be eager to develop the infrastructure and country as a whole.
Not that I would want to live under their political system, to be clear. I wish we could have a democratic system AND also be eager to develop our regions instead of being so protective of everything
I don’t think it’s different politics directly in China. The people believe that change means change for the better. In the west people have lost all hope for progress.
Another way to look at it is that things just move slowly in government land. The tax office moving towards Microsoft has probably been in preparation for half a decade... And do you really believe the government is technically capable of switching DigiD to a different provider on a (relative) moments notice without causing large scale outages?
We'll start seeing government bodies moving away from US IT suppliers in a couple of years.
The actual question is if (capable) SWEs will choose working for (or be a founder of) Dutch/Euro tech companies over US ones, or even leave the US to live there.
Europe is an excellent value prop if you want to be a bartender or baker. Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker.
Don’t forget that they’re in the process of letting our digital government identity being managed by a US company. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
This is part of the point of Carney’s Davos speech. Us middle powers need to de-Americanize together or we don’t stand a chance at succeeding.
Which might be impossible given that sacrifices will have to be made in the interim, and people already riot if you even hint at moving retirement age up a year.
> France, Germany, etc. are much better examples when it comes to sovereignty.
France maybe, Germany most definitely not.
No, not France either. It used to be, and some inertia from the Gaullist past remains, but the current leadership is as useless as everyone else.
It takes time. Hence whey Microsoft has a stranglehold on big gov. customers in other countries.
From my own experience, big changes can take place in smaller gov. organizations, and pretty fast too. I've worked at a place where we swapped out all Microsoft and commercial products to open source alternatives in just a couple of weeks. But it was a smaller and specialized part of an organization, with 30 users.
Trying to do the same change, where there are millions of users involved? It will almost certainly take a decade or more.
The only thing that would accelerate such a process, would be Microsoft shutting down services at the command of, say, the US president. But that would only be the case if said country ended up being sanctioned by the US.
> It takes time. [...] It will almost certainly take a decade or more.
> The Dutch tax office is also currently switching to Microsoft systems
They're not even trying though. They're not even starting the clock. They are actively going in the opposite direction.
It will never happen.
Rather like pre 2022 Russia, governments get warnings that something bad is going to happen that it would be expensive to prepare for, and put off preparing because you don't get political rewards for that.
The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him).
The issue with the EU is that they lack the capacity for any kind of strategic thought. There are multiple reasons why but the underlying cause is that it is possible to move into local minimum where there is a very strong disincentive for any kind of change. Countries in the EU have generally been in that place since before the EU...that is why the EU was created, to limit change. It is isn't political incentives, it is a fundamental aspect of the political culture. If you also look at the stuff that has changed, this only becomes more strange (i.e. government intervention, immigration, regulations). Change is limited to preserve control.
> The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him).
To add to your point, despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government. Local minima, everything is fine, there is no fire, I'm going to make some tea while the tables turns to ash under the pot.
They also work 400 hours less per year than their US counterparts and 1000 less than their Chinese counterparts.
You might be comfortable in that life, but you won't be competitive.
As the other answer says, surely this would always be the case. People do not deal with government regularly and there is a strong disincentive to report upon this.
I think you see the same thing in every Western democracy where people believe there is no corruption or believe in rather comical forms of corruption, but the corruption is actually systemic and a function of some political configuration that can't really stand change. This is certainly the case in Germany where you have this odd alliance between unions and billionaires that has basically led to, despite the amazing talent of their people, amazingly poor policy delivery.
>despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government
Because Germans only believe what their state speech controlled media is telling them. The prussian school is based on getting people to respect authority not about free critical thinking. Makes the population easily susceptible to government propaganda which has been used against them for 100 years already and they still haven't learned.
They also don't believe any foreigners pointing out their internal issue: "no, YOU are wrong, we make ze best cars in ze world(not anymore lol), so our country can't be doing anything wrong".
Ironically GOP talks about European sovereignty over their own defense, but economically want to treat them like a vassal
This is by the way how the defense was treated for decades as well. US resisted the EU from building a formidable army, instead they preferred a vassal state defense, enough to deter others from messing with Europe, not enough for Europe to be independent, and buying almost exclusively from US defense companies propping up US military R&D and financing factories during peacetime.
Now that the US has pivoted to Asia since Obama, they expect the EU to fill the gap they leave behind. But that’s new, the US wanted it exactly like it was pre 2014 or so.
Reading this is like when you hear fat people talk about how all these corporations just keep forcing them to eat junk food.
Meanwhile you live in the same society and eat healthy without issue or expense.
If you think about it in terms of game theory that is actually a fair approach - you have an ally, you propose a best-case path forward for the alliance where both members are strong. If the ally don't want to take that path then you exploit the ally instead since a technically incompetent ally is a liability who needs to be kept under tight control.
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European politicians and bureaucrats are just full of shit and extremely unwilling to make any kind of effort beyond talking.
European politicians are usually not backed by anything even close to a majority, so they need to talk and compromise.
Because there is no punishment for lying in politics.
Look at the Trump, connected to p*dos, instead of stopping wars, started a war, betrayed MAGA, but still no action taken against him, because there is no legal action for lying to become a politican
US tech companies pay well, the cost of living is increasing, so politicians have to think about the future.
There are many different tracks underway in government in different branches. Completely vetoing everything to use Microsoft is a difficult decision as it also stops a lot of features that depend on it, or were made to depend on it, such as updating tax codes. Therefore it is a risk/benefit assessment rather than outright lying. (The latter also happens obviously but just wanted to state that reality is more gray than black and white.)
Greed is the easiest way to compromise anything.
It is a central theme covered in too many sources to list, but it is always a deal with the figurative devil, treason, betrayal of not just oneself, but everyone else who trusted you, lifted you, and relied on you.
It is why treason is such a pernicious and evil act even when one is ignorant of perpetrating it, because you may personally advance your own position for a moment by making a deal with the devil, but the real price is always immeasurably greater.
It is also why no one hates the traitor more than the devil himself, because he knows best what a vile and untrustworthy traitor the person is that would betray his own people. Even the devil cannot even respect that, hence why the only thing one can be sure of when making a deal with the devil is that the devil and his children will always stab you in the back.
It is the existential question all of “the west” is wrestling with right now. Whether they can stop the traitors among them who have long ago made many deals with many devils and his many children…or will they personally “profit” in the short term all the way to figurative hell.
I don't know what the US thinks it will gain by targeting civil servants. They are not the ones with the power to decide what happens, and retaliation would mean more anti-US people selecting themselves into these projects.
> retaliation would mean more anti-US people selecting themselves into these projects.
Very few people are martyrs or want to become martyrs. Even fewer in places where life is generally fine and for a cause that isn't dire to their loved ones.
They are not civil servants.
Similarly UK OfCom is a non governmental organisation, so not civil servants either.
>They are not the ones with the power to decide what happens
This is a very naive interpretation. Bureaucrats have MASSIVE amount of power and control, and in actuality decide many things and how the law is written.
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Wasn't this one of the factors leading to the EU's new payments network?
Yes, civil servants should be allowed to ply their trade without scrutiny.
Yes, Dutch civil servants must not be supervised oder subjected to scrutiny of American law makers. That is sort of self evident.
These civil servants are effectively trying to bypass the US court. These civil servants yield considerable power what comes to the censorship, and the Whitehouse really really hates the idea that the EU can decide, not them, what is allowed. This will send a message that the US stands behind its companies and is not push around. If you want to push non-domestic enforcement, you need to be willing to stand behind the principles and be publicly ready to defend the censorship rulings you set forward.
> Whitehouse really really hates the idea that the EU can decide, not them, what is allowed
.. in the Netherlands. Where the EU and the Dutch government get to decide what happens. That's what national sovereignty means.
I would read the links in the article. The problem is that social media companies worked with civil servants in European countries to remove posts being made people outside Europe. This also happened in the UK where there were parts of the government that were able to make requests directly to social media companies to remove posts on their platform, regardless of where the poster was from.
For obvious reasons, the linked article does not explain that fully.
It is kind of weird to see the turnaround on here from people who complain about the US government being too powerful but, for some reason, are quite okay with an unelected EU bureaucrat being able to govern their internet usage. There are no principles at play here.
Honestly, rather a "unelected EU bureaucrat" (What does this even mean? Are we going to individually elect the entire civil service, or require elected officials to delegate nothing and personally review every decision?) than an American tech-bro governing my internet usage.
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Europeans are virtually serfs of the US.
Not through choice
USA has always seemed it's companies. Will they do the same they did with International Criminal Court? They were investigating Israel genocide and now they judges can't use a credit card or travel.
Reference: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-strongly-rejects-new-us-san...
Sorry, but "dutchnews.nl" is not a source I take seriously. Please link a publication on an established media outlet because this smells like misinfo.
Dutchnews.nl is an established media outlet and what a lot of English/non-Dutch speakers use to keep up with Dutch news (which is perhaps surprisingly to Americans, usually written in Dutch)
They literally mention Vrij Nederland as a source as near enough the first thing in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrij_Nederland and https://www.vn.nl/microsoft-ambtenaren-amerikaanse-overheid
A bit distrustful, but here you go: https://nos.nl/artikel/2615391-techbedrijven-deelden-namen-n...
Civil servant's info is public information (at least in Finland it is).
It's good that bureaucrats can't hide behind bureaucracy.
Good. downvote away, but unelected bureaucrats who make decisions that affect millions of people should not be shielded from public scrutiny. If regulators are exercising significant power over speech, competition, privacy, or access to information, it is legitimate to know who is making those decisions and to examine their actions .. this action from US cos forces skin in the game on these policy researchers ..